1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to the animation display apparatus and the animation display method, and more particularly to the animation display apparatus and method for implementing the animation effect using a dedicated hardware circuit.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, in the applications of electronic products including personal computers and information appliances (e.g., digital televisions), especially in those applications requiring user interfaces, the displays thereof are usually configured to perform the function of displaying images such as a function menu or operations of a cursor. Thus, the requirement of generating animation effects, such as cursor animation or dynamic menu effects, has been induced. In general, the animation effect is achieved by sequentially displaying a series of images, which have small differences therebetween, taking the advantage of the persistence of vision phenomenon of human eyes.
Generally speaking, the animation effect presented in the displayed frames is achieved using software program codes in conjunction with a processor. However, using software to implement the animation effect of display has the drawback of increasing the processor loading and consuming memory space of the display apparatus. In addition, the processing is executed according to the internal operating clock (also referred to as operating by time) when the processor generates the animation effect according to the software program code. However, when the animation is outputted to the display as frames, the transmission and displaying is performed on a frame-by-frame basis (also referred to as operating by frame). Consequently, the animation effect of the “operating by time” causes difficulty when displaying by frames.